


all the king's horses

by mornen



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:31:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12677250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: /The air is cold enough to bite, and Maeglin chokes on it. His mother hides in her bed, wrapped in blankets, close to the fire. She hates the cold, and she hates the snow, and more than anything, she hates ice./ Maeglin and Aredhel in the forest. Very late present for CrackinAndProudOfIt





	all the king's horses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaolcrowofmandos (imperialhuxness)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhuxness/gifts).



Maeglin's skin is silver in the light of the moon. He lies on the forest floor, and his mother lies beside him. The pine needles are soft, and the moss is soft, and the moonlight is soft, but terrifying.

Aredhel kisses his temple, and the wind shifts, and the brown leaves flitter about them. They are both dressed in white, and it glows ghostly in the forest.

'I am so tired,' she says.

She is always tired. Here she is resting. While she was resting she had a child. The child is hers and her life is hers, and she is cold and needs the sun.

Maeglin does not know why she needs the sun, but he waits for it with her in the mornings when they stay up the whole night in the clearings where the sun comes through. They cannot see it, but they can make out the golden light high above them reaching against the tangled branches.

'Is it evil?' he asks, for it feels more terrifying than the moonlight.

She laughs, and that is her only answer. He wonders what she thinks. She is not tied to anything, is she?

l

The air is cold enough to bite, and Maeglin chokes on it. His mother hides in her bed, wrapped in blankets, close to the fire. She hates the cold, and she hates the snow, and more than anything, she hates ice.

At night she screams all through the winter, and when they try to wake her, she lashes at them and cuts them with her nails.

So they stop trying to wake her.

Maeglin lies awake wrapped in furs and listens to her screaming. The fire leaps and crackles and he watches the embers at the edge of it.

His father sits, head bent.

'It is a curse,' he says.

l

In the spring the snow melts and the water thaws, but Aredhel will not go out until the ice has all melted from the river and it is flowing freely again. Even then they will sometimes find patches of snow unmelted in the dark shadows of the forest.

She will hurry away from them, saying, 'Come with me, Maeglin.' Saying, 'I hate it.'

Saying, 'Someone save her.'

l

In the summer she takes him out in the day and they find sweet grass growing in almost patches of sunlight – reflections of light that is really, truly not there, but instead warm and golden in the trees above their heads, dancing on the leaves.

Sometimes they climb up to find it, and it is hot on Maeglin's skin and too bright in his eyes.

'It's like molten metal in the sky,' he says.

She nods and reaches her arms out to it. Her skin is golden in the light of the sun, and her dress glows warm and real.

l

In the autumn she shudders as the air grows cold.

'I hate it,' she says, sharpening a knife. 'The cold is wicked. It wants to kill you.'

At night she starts screaming again, and he does not know what to say to her.

She keeps the knife beside her, and he does not know what it can save her from.

l

He is glad when spring comes again, and the nights grow quiet again.

'I am almost done resting,' she says to him one day. 'Then we'll go.'

'Very well,' he says, and he does want to go. He is tired too, but he cannot rest here.

l

When they leave Aredhel takes him because he is hers, and he does not question it. He does not care for his father. They walk until they leave behind every place he has ever been. Then they walk more, and still there is forest and only glimpses of light.

Maeglin wonders if this is the whole world, and there are no mountains or oceans, and there are no fields flat and aching with space and no hills bare and hedged with rocks.

They walk, and the air grows warmer and smells sweeter. Maeglin is used to air that smells like decay – rot and mould and stagnant spaces. The only relief he's known from it are when the decay was overpowered by the scent of formed metal or when the air grew so cold it cut off all scents and there was only the cold and the sound of his mother's screams.

Now the air is warm and sweet, and they see flowers growing along the riverbank.

'It was much more beautiful,' Aredhel says, and he knows where she is talking about, and he does not care, for he has never seen anything as beautiful.

He picks the flowers and carries them, and she tells him that he has killed them.

'They'll whither now,' she chides.

They do. They droop in his hand, and the petals fall wrinkled and browning. But he does not care, because it is the only way he could have them.

He picks more flowers to replace them, and they too die in his hand.

Aredhel watches him. She does not scold him again.

l

One day when they are walking he notices that the spaces between the trees are blue now. He points to it. 'It's blue,' he says.

She stares at him. 'That's the sky.'

He nods. He wonders if they have reached the end of the world where the sky meets the earth, for how else could the sky be in front of them and not high above?

And then they climb a slight hill, and they look out over land, and there are no trees. The land stretches and meets the sky in the distance, and it is hazy, and there are clouds that line the edge of the world.

'Where are we?' he asks. 'Have we reached the end of the earth?'

She looks at him. 'That is just how the sky is.'

'I see,' he says.

The wind lifts warm. The trees behind him dance.

'Come,' she says. 'I am done resting.'

They go on.


End file.
